There was nobody like him. Dave had the greatest of friends that stuck by him through thick and thin, and he loved them all. Alene understood his humor better than anyone. I am just thankful to have been part of his life. This is Dave's truck ... which we so appropriately call "Dave" ... and which he willed to Alene before he died. Just like him to be taking care of everyone else!
(Written by Dave for his 40th grammar school reunion/Mt. Carmel School – 6/28/03)
David Collins — 40 years and this is what you have to show for it ? ? ?
So when we last left me, (we’re talking 8th grade here) I was pretty good in math and English and all that, and got good grades below the line (c’mon, you remember: Deportment? Courtesy? Application?). I was a hopeless athlete, painfully awkward with girls, and much to Sister Cecile Elizabeth’s chagrin, Altar Boy Captain. “Greg Myall would have been so much better!” she’d lament, having zeroed in on my tendency toward being a wise ass and Greg’s toward being a priest. Cecile was a real whacko in my book, but give her credit. She had me nailed. Given half a chance, I’m still pretty much a wise ass.
Bellarmine was next, where, due to an all-male student body, my painful awkwardness with girls survived intact and “hopeless student” was quickly added to “hopeless athlete.” The Jesuits had a very serious attitude about academics, causing me to develop a very serious attitude problem about Jesuits. An example? My junior English teacher gave us an assignment to write a poem about a color. Simple enough, right? I wrote:
“Red is a word that begins with ‘F’
and ends in ‘U’, ‘C’, ‘K’
Oh, your mind is filled with muck
You know the word is ‘Firetruck!’”
Bellarmine didn’t grade Deportment, Courtesy and Application, but when they expelled me a few weeks later on a completely unrelated issue (I gave them a lot to work with) it was clear that they had a “below the line” mentality and that I had crossed it or sunk below it or whatever. . .
After totaling my father’s brand new car a few weeks later (he said I had an attitude problem – actually he used other words to describe his feelings), I enrolled at Sequoia, which was a much better fit. I became only a run of the mill screw up there. And despite a year of what seemed like vacation after the rigidity of Bellarmine, I was introduced to journalism and found some direction.
I adjusted to college okay. Yes, CSM of course! With a grade point average that only occasionally climbed above 2.0, institutions of higher learning chose not to fight over me. College actually turned out to be a breeze. Well okay, maybe more of a storm. Nine years in all, with stops along the way for full time work (a newspaper and a mountaineering school), travel, and illness – a nasty but successful yearlong bout with lymphatic cancer (Hodgkin's disease) that no doubt radiated at least some of the attitude out of me. Finally I got out of San José State with a degree in Journalism and Industrial Studies (photography and printing technology).
No military service (IV-F), though I did get a rather stern letter from the Selective Service informing me that I faced ten years in prison for sending my draft card to the president. Nixon however, soon had his own attitude problems and I never heard back from the SS.
With college behind me, I tried my hand as a . . . freelance graphic designer? No training, no experience, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Six years later, after billing paltry sums like $18,000 per year, I came in from the cold and took a job as art director at a newspaper. I had been an editor and a reporter and I’d been doing this design stuff so . . . anyway, it all worked out okay and I stayed there for six years until I moved on to a job at Stanford University as a graphic designer.
The rest of my career has been more of the same – a mix of freelance graphics, writing, photography and consulting and full time graphic design work. I also served as a volunteer for an international human rights organization for a dozen years or so including trips to Northern Ireland where I interviewed a Nobel Peace Prize winner and later arranged a series of fund raisers for her when she visited the Bay Area.
Other than that, lets see . . . I got over my awkwardness with girls somewhere along the way, though it took stumbling through a lot of relationships to get there. Never did get married, though I did live with Patty Cullen (Mt. Carmel ‘68, Dick’s cousin) for seven or eight years and helped raise her daughter Shannon from age eight to15 or so. Actually I still have a bit of a hand in it. She’s 22 and just graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and we talk often. And Patty and I remain great friends.
My athletic ineptitude survives intact. Even institutionalized it by co-founding the Neo-Lizard Holiday Invitational Golf Tournament that ran for 20 years. We strongly encouraged lying, cheating and general disrespect for all things golf. A sort of twisted Special Olympics for the athletically challenged and attitudinally deviant alike!
And having dabbled in cancer once – you’d think I’d know better than to try the same trick twice, but it’s back. Well, not exactly. This time it’s a whole new strain (cholangio carcinoma – bile duct cancer) and the prognosis is less than scintillating. Okay, it’s grim. Jeez, split hairs why don’t you. Well anyway, it might finally cure my attitude problem!
Post Script: David passed away on August 21, 2004. He was in his home, surrounded by his family. He was able to go out the way he wanted: no tubes, no hospital room, no delerium! Dave’s sharp wit and brilliant mind endured to the end. Alene McCarthy Karthas
On the Passing of a Dear Friend
David Collins was a journalist with a wry sense of humor. Look at the photograph he composed of himself – “dead end” - some short months before his death.
When David observed the world around him, he saw all too easily people’s foibles and the world’s hypocrisy. Yet his sharp wit was always tempered with an appreciation of each person’s humanity. It was easy to laugh at yourself around Dave. It was even easier to love him.
I first encountered Dave a few days after I enrolled for morning kindergarten at Lincoln Elementary school. Dave was perched precariously on the top of the monkey bars – those play structures of death planted like a skeletal lunar module in the sea of concrete that was our Lincoln playground. What struck me about Dave was not subtle nuance. Dave was wearing a football helmet, as were Dick Cullen and a few other kinder warriors, and was engaged in a deadly throw-the-bastards-to-their-deaths/king of the monkey bars game. This wasn’t for my tender soul, but it made a lasting impression on me.
Unfortunately for me, we at Lincoln lost Dave (and quite a few others) to that mysterious Catholic school – Mt. Carmel – the next year.
Fortunately for me, eleven years later, Dave’s indomitable monkey bar spirit would get him thrown out of Mt. Carmel graduate school – Bellarmine High School. As anyone who has known Dave will testify, Dave could not long be bottled up by one rather strict world view. His soul could not but perceive and then challenge the inconsistencies of the conventional.
(This later blather may be a bit of glorification, since I think Dave was actually tossed from Bellarmine for holding a wild party, of truly historic proportions, while his parents were out of town, rather than nailing philosophical antitheses to the church door. But since we are in the business of myth making, and Dave is worthy of that, please disregard this addendum).
And so Dave landed amidst the proletariat of our beloved Sequoia High School. Sequoia, by his own admission (read “David Collins – 40 years and this is what you have to show for it???”), was a much better fit for Dave’s spirit. This was when many of us got to know and love him.
Through both his cancers, through my divorce and the deaths of my parents, in his homes in Menlo Park and La Honda, we became deeper and deeper friends. I had the great honor of making Dave his first marijuana/baloney sandwich (we didn’t inhale) on a Pescadero hillside. He told me about his experiences with peacemaking in Northen Ireland, what it was like to be a cancer patient, how he had begun to read the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han. He listened to my experiences of being a father of six in a blended family. We discussed Christianity, which he had distanced himself from and I had embraced. He was passionate about politics and justice for people and the planet.
In the last many months of his illness, Dave fully understood that his death was coming. He was not unduly afraid. His humor kept its edge, his compassion was unfazed.
David was the best of friends to many people. May we be to each other what he was to each of us who had the joy of knowing him.
Dave is still in my heart. The funniest most endearing person! If he doesn't meet me when I walk into that final white light I am going to be f*****g pissed!
Hey Mouser, remember, right after graduation, when you came up to Humbodlt and we went duck hunting. My boat got stuck on the mud flats as the tide receeded and we had to "slogg thru clam piss", as you said, to get out. You called a few weeks later and said to be careful, Humboldt Bay causes cancer. I always remember your COURAGE and WIT and when times are tough I say to myself just Mouse up and get it done!!!
Dick Cullen - What can I say about my best friend? Shortly after we met in kindergarten and started playing all things athletic, my Dad nicknamed Dave "Mousemeat" for his body type and severe lack of natural athletic ability. It was evident that he wanted me to hang around with someone who was an all-star athlete. What attracted me to Mouser was his quick wit and his smart aleck attitude that got us out of many a jam! We were like brothers in that we shared secrets, fumbled through adolescence, and were fairly disrespectful about most things. As we both had paper routes in the afternoon, he was not allowed to "play" until he was done. There was many an occasion where I whistled through my route and helped him with his. One time, in my route, I broke a small pane in a porch window with an over-zealous throw of the "tomahawk " paper that we folded. Dave said, "No problem, just move the paper and put a rock inside the porch." He was an incredibly quick problem solver! Behind the smart-ass attitude and sarcastic comebacks, he was thoughtful, caring, and introspective. He was very instrumental in sensing when Joe Iencarelli needed a visit (shortly before he passed away) and when my Aunt Lois (Patty Cullen's mom) was struggling with her health. Dave came to visit us in Spokane while he was struggling with his second bout with cancer. It was an enormous effort and it took a huge toll on his body. But he had promised he would visit. What can I say. Dave proved my Dad wrong. He wasn't "mousemeat" - he was an unbelievable friend and my hero.
Oh, my gosh, Dick - I remember that trip! I offered to ride with him to Spokane or drive him up and fly home but NO! He could do it himself. BUT - he called me at 6:00 a.m. to tell me that he was sitting in traffic in the East Bay and to wake up and keep him company for awhile. That stinker! I shook off the cobwebs, and on we went chatting for over two hours. He played some songs from CDs he had with him and we'd debate their merit, one of us would tell a story or ask a question and the other would go on and on. Finally he said he was moving freely now and released me in his dismissive voice. He knew I hated that!! I am laughing while I write this because I can HEAR HIM NOW!!! I told him to call if he needed a driver along the way but to be sure he was near an airport. He assured me he would not, and he made the round trip against the odds. So glad he made it. Aren't we lucky? What a character. What a lovely man.
Alene McCarthy (Karthas)
Here's another fun pic at a yearbook signing party, senior year.
Sue Kastelic, Josie Vasquez, David. No idea who owns the back of the head in the foreground.
Linda Quirk (Hayward)
Alan Edward Duncan
My Dave Collins story.
After one late midweek afternoon church service, my girlfriend and I were decending the steps from Mt. Carmel. Dave was on the step behind us.
On the step in front of us were two elderly ladies decending arm in arm, maybe a mother and daughter.
Dave exclaimed in his loudest voice, " that sermon (expletive)ing sucked."
The older lady shook rather violently, and the younger one turned to me and read me the riot act.
Collins 1, Duncan 0.
RIP old friend.
Alene McCarthy (Karthas)
IN MEMORIAL – In Dave’s own words…
(Written by Dave for his 40th grammar school reunion/Mt. Carmel School – 6/28/03)
David Collins — 40 years and this is what you have to show for it ? ? ?
So when we last left me, (we’re talking 8th grade here) I was pretty good in math and English and all that, and got good grades below the line (c’mon, you remember: Deportment? Courtesy? Application?). I was a hopeless athlete, painfully awkward with girls, and much to Sister Cecile Elizabeth’s chagrin, Altar Boy Captain. “Greg Myall would have been so much better!” she’d lament, having zeroed in on my tendency toward being a wise ass and Greg’s toward being a priest. Cecile was a real whacko in my book, but give her credit. She had me nailed. Given half a chance, I’m still pretty much a wise ass.
Bellarmine was next, where, due to an all-male student body, my painful awkwardness with girls survived intact and “hopeless student” was quickly added to “hopeless athlete.” The Jesuits had a very serious attitude about academics, causing me to develop a very serious attitude problem about Jesuits. An example? My junior English teacher gave us an assignment to write a poem about a color. Simple enough, right? I wrote:
“Red is a word that begins with ‘F’
and ends in ‘U’, ‘C’, ‘K’
Oh, your mind is filled with muck
You know the word is ‘Firetruck!’”
Bellarmine didn’t grade Deportment, Courtesy and Application, but when they expelled me a few weeks later on a completely unrelated issue (I gave them a lot to work with) it was clear that they had a “below the line” mentality and that I had crossed it or sunk below it or whatever. . .
After totaling my father’s brand new car a few weeks later (he said I had an attitude problem – actually he used other words to describe his feelings), I enrolled at Sequoia, which was a much better fit. I became only a run of the mill screw up there. And despite a year of what seemed like vacation after the rigidity of Bellarmine, I was introduced to journalism and found some direction.
I adjusted to college okay. Yes, CSM of course! With a grade point average that only occasionally climbed above 2.0, institutions of higher learning chose not to fight over me. College actually turned out to be a breeze. Well okay, maybe more of a storm. Nine years in all, with stops along the way for full time work (a newspaper and a mountaineering school), travel, and illness – a nasty but successful yearlong bout with lymphatic cancer (Hodgkin's disease) that no doubt radiated at least some of the attitude out of me. Finally I got out of San José State with a degree in Journalism and Industrial Studies (photography and printing technology).
No military service (IV-F), though I did get a rather stern letter from the Selective Service informing me that I faced ten years in prison for sending my draft card to the president. Nixon however, soon had his own attitude problems and I never heard back from the SS.
With college behind me, I tried my hand as a . . . freelance graphic designer? No training, no experience, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Six years later, after billing paltry sums like $18,000 per year, I came in from the cold and took a job as art director at a newspaper. I had been an editor and a reporter and I’d been doing this design stuff so . . . anyway, it all worked out okay and I stayed there for six years until I moved on to a job at Stanford University as a graphic designer.
The rest of my career has been more of the same – a mix of freelance graphics, writing, photography and consulting and full time graphic design work. I also served as a volunteer for an international human rights organization for a dozen years or so including trips to Northern Ireland where I interviewed a Nobel Peace Prize winner and later arranged a series of fund raisers for her when she visited the Bay Area.
Other than that, lets see . . . I got over my awkwardness with girls somewhere along the way, though it took stumbling through a lot of relationships to get there. Never did get married, though I did live with Patty Cullen (Mt. Carmel ‘68, Dick’s cousin) for seven or eight years and helped raise her daughter Shannon from age eight to15 or so. Actually I still have a bit of a hand in it. She’s 22 and just graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and we talk often. And Patty and I remain great friends.
My athletic ineptitude survives intact. Even institutionalized it by co-founding the Neo-Lizard Holiday Invitational Golf Tournament that ran for 20 years. We strongly encouraged lying, cheating and general disrespect for all things golf. A sort of twisted Special Olympics for the athletically challenged and attitudinally deviant alike!
And having dabbled in cancer once – you’d think I’d know better than to try the same trick twice, but it’s back. Well, not exactly. This time it’s a whole new strain (cholangio carcinoma – bile duct cancer) and the prognosis is less than scintillating. Okay, it’s grim. Jeez, split hairs why don’t you. Well anyway, it might finally cure my attitude problem!
Post Script: David passed away on August 21, 2004. He was in his home, surrounded by his family. He was able to go out the way he wanted: no tubes, no hospital room, no delerium! Dave’s sharp wit and brilliant mind endured to the end. Alene McCarthy Karthas
On the Passing of a Dear Friend
David Collins was a journalist with a wry sense of humor. Look at the photograph he composed of himself – “dead end” - some short months before his death.
When David observed the world around him, he saw all too easily people’s foibles and the world’s hypocrisy. Yet his sharp wit was always tempered with an appreciation of each person’s humanity. It was easy to laugh at yourself around Dave. It was even easier to love him.
I first encountered Dave a few days after I enrolled for morning kindergarten at Lincoln Elementary school. Dave was perched precariously on the top of the monkey bars – those play structures of death planted like a skeletal lunar module in the sea of concrete that was our Lincoln playground. What struck me about Dave was not subtle nuance. Dave was wearing a football helmet, as were Dick Cullen and a few other kinder warriors, and was engaged in a deadly throw-the-bastards-to-their-deaths/king of the monkey bars game. This wasn’t for my tender soul, but it made a lasting impression on me.
Unfortunately for me, we at Lincoln lost Dave (and quite a few others) to that mysterious Catholic school – Mt. Carmel – the next year.
Fortunately for me, eleven years later, Dave’s indomitable monkey bar spirit would get him thrown out of Mt. Carmel graduate school – Bellarmine High School. As anyone who has known Dave will testify, Dave could not long be bottled up by one rather strict world view. His soul could not but perceive and then challenge the inconsistencies of the conventional.
(This later blather may be a bit of glorification, since I think Dave was actually tossed from Bellarmine for holding a wild party, of truly historic proportions, while his parents were out of town, rather than nailing philosophical antitheses to the church door. But since we are in the business of myth making, and Dave is worthy of that, please disregard this addendum).
And so Dave landed amidst the proletariat of our beloved Sequoia High School. Sequoia, by his own admission (read “David Collins – 40 years and this is what you have to show for it???”), was a much better fit for Dave’s spirit. This was when many of us got to know and love him.
Through both his cancers, through my divorce and the deaths of my parents, in his homes in Menlo Park and La Honda, we became deeper and deeper friends. I had the great honor of making Dave his first marijuana/baloney sandwich (we didn’t inhale) on a Pescadero hillside. He told me about his experiences with peacemaking in Northen Ireland, what it was like to be a cancer patient, how he had begun to read the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han. He listened to my experiences of being a father of six in a blended family. We discussed Christianity, which he had distanced himself from and I had embraced. He was passionate about politics and justice for people and the planet.
In the last many months of his illness, Dave fully understood that his death was coming. He was not unduly afraid. His humor kept its edge, his compassion was unfazed.
David was the best of friends to many people. May we be to each other what he was to each of us who had the joy of knowing him.
Andy Elliott
September 2006
Andrew Elliott
Dave is still in my heart. The funniest most endearing person! If he doesn't meet me when I walk into that final white light I am going to be f*****g pissed!
Stanley Ware Stetson
Hey Mouser, remember, right after graduation, when you came up to Humbodlt and we went duck hunting. My boat got stuck on the mud flats as the tide receeded and we had to "slogg thru clam piss", as you said, to get out. You called a few weeks later and said to be careful, Humboldt Bay causes cancer. I always remember your COURAGE and WIT and when times are tough I say to myself just Mouse up and get it done!!!
Richard Cullen
Dick Cullen - What can I say about my best friend? Shortly after we met in kindergarten and started playing all things athletic, my Dad nicknamed Dave "Mousemeat" for his body type and severe lack of natural athletic ability. It was evident that he wanted me to hang around with someone who was an all-star athlete. What attracted me to Mouser was his quick wit and his smart aleck attitude that got us out of many a jam! We were like brothers in that we shared secrets, fumbled through adolescence, and were fairly disrespectful about most things. As we both had paper routes in the afternoon, he was not allowed to "play" until he was done. There was many an occasion where I whistled through my route and helped him with his. One time, in my route, I broke a small pane in a porch window with an over-zealous throw of the "tomahawk " paper that we folded. Dave said, "No problem, just move the paper and put a rock inside the porch." He was an incredibly quick problem solver! Behind the smart-ass attitude and sarcastic comebacks, he was thoughtful, caring, and introspective. He was very instrumental in sensing when Joe Iencarelli needed a visit (shortly before he passed away) and when my Aunt Lois (Patty Cullen's mom) was struggling with her health. Dave came to visit us in Spokane while he was struggling with his second bout with cancer. It was an enormous effort and it took a huge toll on his body. But he had promised he would visit. What can I say. Dave proved my Dad wrong. He wasn't "mousemeat" - he was an unbelievable friend and my hero.
I
Alene McCarthy (Karthas)
Oh, my gosh, Dick - I remember that trip! I offered to ride with him to Spokane or drive him up and fly home but NO! He could do it himself. BUT - he called me at 6:00 a.m. to tell me that he was sitting in traffic in the East Bay and to wake up and keep him company for awhile. That stinker! I shook off the cobwebs, and on we went chatting for over two hours. He played some songs from CDs he had with him and we'd debate their merit, one of us would tell a story or ask a question and the other would go on and on. Finally he said he was moving freely now and released me in his dismissive voice. He knew I hated that!! I am laughing while I write this because I can HEAR HIM NOW!!! I told him to call if he needed a driver along the way but to be sure he was near an airport. He assured me he would not, and he made the round trip against the odds. So glad he made it. Aren't we lucky? What a character. What a lovely man.
Mitchell V. Halgren
"Mouse" was one of the cleverest and often somewhat caustic (could be an understatement....) people I've ever had the pleasure to know.
Richard Cullen